GERMAN LITERATURE. Compared with other literatures, that of the German-speaking peoples presents a strangely broken and interrupted course; it falls into more or less isolated groups, separated from each other by periods which in intellectual darkness and ineptitude are virtually without a parallel in other European lands. The explanation of this irregularity of development is to be sought less in the chequered political history of the German people - although this was often reason enough - than in the strongly marked, one might almost say, provocative character of the national mind as expressed in literature. The Germans were not able, like their partially latinized English cousins - or even their Scandinavian neighbours - to adapt themselves to the various waves of literary influence which emanated from Italy and France and spread with irresistible power over all Europe; their literary history has been rather a struggle for independent expression, a constant warring against outside forces, even when the latter - like the influence of English literature in the 18th century and of Scandinavian at the close of the 19th - were hailed as friendly and not hostile. It is a peculiarity of German literature that in those ages when, owing to its own poverty and impotence, it was reduced to borrowing its ideas and its poetic forms from other lands, it sank to the most servile imitation; while the first sign of returning health has invariably been the repudiation of foreign influence and the assertion of the right of genius to untrammelled expression. Thus Germany's periods of literary efflorescence rarely coincide with those of other nations, and great European movements, like the Renaissance, passed over her without producing a single great poet.

This chequered course, however, renders the grouping of German literature and the task of the historian the easier. The first and simplest classification is that afforded by the various stages of linguistic development. In accordance with the three divisions in the history of the High German language, there is an Old High German, a Middle High German and a New High German or Modern High German literary epoch. It is obvious, however, that the last of these divisions covers too enormous a period of literary history to be regarded as analogous to the first two. The present survey is consequently divided into six main sections: I. The Old High German Period, including the literature of the Old Saxon dialect, from the earliest times to the middle of the 11th century.

II. The Middle High German Period, from the middle of the II th to the middle of the 14th century.

III. The Transition Period, from the middle of the 14th century to the Reformation in the 16th century.

IV. The Period of Renaissance and Pseudo-classicism, from the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th.

V. The Classical Period of Modern German literature, from the middle of the 18th century to Goethe's death in 1832.

VI. The Period from Goethe's death to the present day.

I. THE OLD High German Period (c. 750 - 1050) Of all the Germanic races, the tribes with which we have more particularly to deal here ware the latest to attain intellectual maturity. The Goths had, centuries earlier, under their famous bishop Ulfilas or Wulfila, possessed the Bible in their vernacular, the northern races could point to their Edda, the Germanic tribes in England to a rich and virile Old English poetry, before a written German literature of any consequence existed at all. At the same time, these continental tribes, in the epoch that lay between the Migrations of the 5th century and the age of Charles the Great, were not without poetic literature of a kind, but it was not committed to writing, or, at least, no record of such a poetry has come down to us. Its existence is vouched for by indirect historical evidence, and by the fact that the sagas, out of which the German national epic was welded at a later date, originated in the great upheaval of the 5th century. When the vernacular literature began to emerge from an unwritten state in the 8th century, it proved to be merely a weak reflection of the ecclesiastical writings of the monasteries; and this, with [MIDDLE High German Period very few exceptions, Old High German literature remained. Translations of the liturgy, of Tatian's Gospel Harmony (c. 835), of fragments of sermons, form a large proportion of it. Occasionally, as in the so-called Monsee Fragments, and at the end of the period, in the prose of Notker Labeo (d. 1022), this ecclesiastical literature attains a surprising maturity of style and expression. But it had no vitality of its own; it virtually sprang into existance at the command of Charlemagne, whose policy with regard to the use of the vernacular in place of Latin was liberal and far-seeing; and it docilely obeyed the tastes of the rulers that followed, becoming severely orthodox under Louis the Pious, and consenting to immediate extinction when the Saxon emperors withdrew their favour from it. Apart from a few shorter poetic fragments of interest, such as the Merseburg Charms (Zauberspriiche), an undoubted relic of pre-Christian times, the Wessobrunn Prayer (c. 780), the Muspilli, an imaginative description of the Day of Judgment, and the Ludwigslied (881), which may be regarded as the starting point for the German historical ballad, the only High German poem of importance in this early period was the Gospel Book (Luber evangeliorum) of Otfrid of Weissenburg (c. 800-870). Even this work is more interesting as the earliest attempt to supersede alliteration in German poetry by rhyme, than for such poetic life as the monk of Weissenburg was able to instil into his narrative. In fact, for the only genuine poetry of this epoch we have to look, not to the High German but to the Low German races. They alone seemed able to give literary expression to the memories handed down in oral tradition from the 5th century; to Saxon tradition we owe the earliest extant fragment of a national saga, the Lay of Hildebrand (Hildebrandslied, c. Soo), and a Saxon poet was the author of a vigorous alliterative version of the Gospel story, the Heliand (c. 830), and also of part of the Old Testament (Genesis). This alliterative epic - for epic it may be called - is the one poem of this age in which the Christian tradition has been adapted to German poetic needs. Of the existence of a lyric poetry we only know by hearsay; and the drama had nowhere in Europe yet emerged from its earliest purely liturgic condition. Such as it was, the vernacular literature of the Old High German period enjoyed but a brief existence, and in the 10th and 11th centuries darkness again closed over it. The dominant "German" literature in these centuries is in Latin; but that literature is not without national interest, for it shows in what direction the German mind was moving. The Lay of Walter (Waltharilied, c. 930), written in elegant hexameters by Ekkehard of St Gall, the moralizing dramas of Hrosvitha (Roswitha) of Gandersheim, the Ecbasis captivi (c. 940), earliest of all the Beast epics, and the romantic adventures of Ruodlieb (c. 1030), form a literature which, Latin although it is, foreshadows the future developments of German poetry.

II. THE Middle High German Period (1050-1350) (a) Early Middle High German Poetry. - The beginnings of Mi L e High German literature were hardly less tentative than those of the preceding period. The Saxon emperors, with their Latin and even Byzantine tastes, had made it extremely difficult to take up the thread where Notker let it drop. Williram of Ebersberg, the commentator of the Song of Songs (c. 1063), did certainly profit by Notker's example, but he stands alone. The Church had no helping hand to offer poetry, as in the more liberal epoch of the great Charles; for, at the middle of the 11th century, when the linguistic change from. Old to Middle High German was taking place, a movement of religious asceticism, originating in the Burgundian monastery of Cluny, spread across Europe, and before long all the German peoples fell under its influence. For a century there was no room for any literature that did not place itself unreservedly at the service of the Church, a service which meant the complete abnegation of the brighter side of life. Repellent in their asceticism are, for instance, poems like Memento mori (c. 1050), Vom Glauben, a verse commentary on the creed by a monk Hartmann (c. 1120), and a poem on " the remembrance of death " (Von des todes gehugede) by Heinreich von Melk (c. 1150); only rarely, as in a few narrative poems on Old Testament subjects, are the poets of this time able to forget for a time their lugubrious faith. In the Ezzolied (c. 1060), a spirited lay by a monk of Bamberg on the life, miracles and death of Christ, and in the Annolied (c. I 080), a poem in praise of the archbishop Anno of Cologne, we find, however, some traces of a higher poetic imagination.

The transition from this rigid ecclesiastic spirit to a freer, more imaginative literature is to be seen in the lyric poetry inspired by the Virgin, in the legends of the saints which bulk so largely in the poetry of the 12th century, and in the general trend towards mysticism. Andreas, Pilatus, Aegidius, Albanius are the heroes of monkish romances of that age, and the stories of Sylvester and Crescentia form the most attractive parts of the Kaiserchronik (c. 1130-1150), a long, confused chronicle of the world which contains many elements common to later Middle High German poetry. The national sagas, of which the poet of the Kaiserchronik had not been oblivious, soon began to assert themselves in the popular literature. The wandering Spielleute, the lineal descendants of the jesters and minstrels of the dark ages, who were now rapidly becoming a factor of importance in literature, were here the innovators; to them we owe the romance of Konig Rother (c. I 160), and the kindred stories of Orendel, Oswald and Salomon and Markolf (Salman and Morolf). All these poems bear witness to a new element, which in these years kindled the German imagination and helped to counteract the austerity of the religious faith - the Crusades. With what alacrity the Germans revelled in the wonderland of the East is to be seen especially in the Alexanderlied (c. 1130), and in Herzog Ernst (c. 1180), romances which point out the way to another important development of German medieval literature, the Court epic. The latter type of romance was the immediate product of the social conditions created by chivalry and, like chivalry itself, was determined and influenced by its French origin; so also was the version of the Chanson de Roland (Rolandslied, c. 1135), which we owe to another priest, Konrad of Regensburg, who, with considerable probability, has been identified with the author of the Kaiserchronik. The Court epic was, however, more immediately ushered in by Eilhart von Oberge, a native of the neighbourhood of Hildesheim who, in his Tristant (c. 1 170), chose that Arthurian type of romance which from now on was especially cultivated by the poets of the Court epic; and of equally early origin is a knightly romance of Floris and Blancheflur, another of the favourite love stories of the middle ages. In these years, too, the Beast epic, which had been represented by the Latin Ecbasis captivi, was reintroduced into Germany by an Alsatian monk, Heinrich der Glichezzere, who based his Reinhart Fuchs (c. 1180) on the French Roman de Renart. Lastly, we have to consider the beginning of the Minnesang, or lyric, which in the last decades of the 12th century burst out with extraordinary vigour in Austria and South Germany. The origins are obscure, and it is still debatable how much in the German Minnesang is indigenous and national, how much due to French and Provençal influence; for even in its earliest phases the Minnesang reveals correspondences with the contemporary lyric of the south of France. The freshness and originality of the early South German singers, such as Kiirenberg, Dietmar von Eist, the Burggraf of Rietenburg and Meinloh von Sevelingen, are not, however, to be questioned; in spite of foreign influence, their verses make the impression of having been a spontaneous expression of German lyric feeling in the 12th century. The Spruchdichtung, a form of poetry which in this period is represented by at least two poets who call themselves Herger and " Der Spervogel," was less dependent on foreign models; the pointed and satirical strophes of these poets were the forerunners of a vast literature which did not reach its highest development until after literature had passed from the hands of the noble-born knight to those of the burgher of the towns.

The German novel of the 17th century was, as has been already indicated, less hampered by Renaissance laws than other forms of literature, and although it was none the less at the mercy of foreign influence, that influence was more varied and manifold in its character. Don Quixote had been partly translated early in the 17th century, the picaresque romance had found its way to Germany at a still earlier date; while H. M. Moscherosch (1601 `1669) in his Gesichte Philanders von Sittewald (1642-1643) made the Suenos of Quevedo the basis for vivid pictures of the life of the time, interspersed with satire. The best German novel of the 17th century, Der abenteurliche Simplicissimus (1669) by H. J. Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (c 5625-1676), is a picaresque novel, but one that owed little more than its form to the Spaniards. It is in great measure the autobiography of its author, and describes with uncompromising realism the social disintegration and the horrors of the Thirty Years' War. But this remarkable book stands alone; Grimmelshausen's other writings are but further contributions to the same theme, and he left no disciples worthy of carrying on the tradition he had created. Christian Weise (1642-1708), rector of the Zittau gymnasium, wrote a few satirical novels, but his realism and satire are too obviously didactic. He is seen to better advantage in his dramas, of which he wrote more than fifty for performance by his scholars.

The real successor of Simplicissimus in Germany was the English Robinson Crusoe, a novel which, on its appearance, was immediately translated into German (1721); it called forth an extraordinary flood of imitations, the so-called " Robinsonaden," the vogue of which is even still kept alive by Der schweizerische Robinson of J. R. Wyss (1812 ff.). With the exception of J. G. Schnabel's Inset Felsenburg (1731-1743), the literary value of these imitations is slight. They represented, however, a healthier and more natural development of fiction than the " galant " romances which were introduced in the train of the Renaissance movement, and cultivated by writers like Philipp von Zesen (1619-1689), Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick (1633-1714), A. H. Buchholtz (1607-1671), H. A. von Ziegler (56J3-5697) - author of the famous Asiatische Banise (1688) - and D. C. von Lohenstein (1635-1683), whose Arminius (1689-1690) is on the whole the most promising novel of this group. The last mentioned writer and Christian Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau (1617-1679) are sometimes regarded as the leaders of a " second Silesian school," as opposed to the first school of Opitz. As the cultivators of the bombastic and Euphuistic style of the Italians Guarini and Marini, and of the Spanish writer Gongora, Lohenstein and Hofmannswaldau touched the lowest point to which German poetry ever sank.

But this aberration of taste was happily of short duration. Although socially the recovery of the German people from the desolation of the war was slow and laborious, the intellectual life of Germany was rapidly recuperating under the influence of foreign thinkers. Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694), Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) and, above all, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), the first of the great German philosophers, laid the foundations of that system of rationalism which dominated Germany for the better part of the 18th century; yvhile German religious life was strengthened and enriched by a revival of pietism, under mystic thinkers like Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), a revival which also left its traces on religious poetry. Such hopeful signs of convalescence could not but be accompanied by an improvement in literary taste, and this is seen in the first instance in a substitution for the bombast and conceits of Lohenstein and Hofmannswaldau, of poetry on the stricter and soberer lines laid down by Boileau. The so-called " court poets " who opposed the second Silesian school, men like Rudolf von Canitz (1654-1699), Johann von Besser (16J4-1729) and Benjamin Neukirch (1665-1729), were not inspired, but they had at least a certain " correctness " of taste; and from their midst sprang one gifted lyric genius, Johann Christian Gunther (1695-1723), who wrote love-songs such as had not been heard in Germany since the days of the Minnesang. The methods of Hofmannswaldau had obtained considerable vogue in Hamburg, where the Italian opera kept the decadent Renaissance poetry alive. Here, however, the incisive wit of Christian Wernigke's (166'- 1725) epigrams was an effective antidote, and Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680-1747), a native of Hamburg, who had been deeply impressed by the appreciation of nature in English poetry, gave the artificialities of the Silesians their death-blow. But the influence of English literature was not merely destructive in these years; in the translations and imitations of the English Spectator, Tatter and Guardian - the so-called moralische Wochenschriften - it helped to regenerate literary taste, and to implant healthy moral ideas in the German middle classes.

The chief representative of the literary movement inaugurated by the Silesian " court poets " was Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700-1766), who between 1724 and 1740 succeeded in establishing in Leipzig, the metropolis of German taste, literary reforms modelled on the principles of French 17th-century classicism. He reformed and purified the stage according to French ideas, and provided it with a repertory of French origin; in his Kritische Dichtkunst (1730) he laid down the principles according to which good literature was to be produced and judged. As Opitz had reformed German letters with the help of Ronsard, so now Gottsched took his standpoint on the principles of Boileau as interpreted by contemporary French critics and theorists. With Gottsched, whose services in purifying the German language have stood the test of time better than his literary or dramatic reforms, the period of German Renaissance literature reaches its culmination and at the same time its close. The movement of the age advanced too rapidly for the Leipzig dictator; in 1740 a new epoch opened in German poetry and he was soon left hopelessly behind.

V. THE Classical Period Of Modern German Literature. (1740-1832) (a) From the Swiss Controversy to the " Sturm and Drang."- Between Opitz and Gottsched German literature passed successively through the various stages characteristic of all Renaissance literatures - from that represented by Trissino and the French Pleiade, by way of the aberrations of Marini and the estilo culto, to the art poetique of Boileau. And precisely as in France, the next advance was achieved in a battle between the " ancients and the " moderns," the German " ancients " being represented by Gottsched, the " moderns " by the Swiss literary reformers, J. J. Bodmer (1698-1783) and J. J. Breitinger (1701-1776).. The latter in his Kritische Dichtkunst (I 739) maintained doctrines which were in opposition to Gottsched's standpoint in his treatise of the same name, and Bodmer supported his friend's initiative; a pamphlet war ensued between Leipzig and Zurich,. with which in 1740-1741 the classical period of modern German literature may be said to open. The Swiss, men of little originality, found their theories in the writings of Italian and English critics; and from these they learned how literature might be freed from the fetters of pseudo-classicism. Basing their arguments on Milton's Paradise Lost, which Bodmer had translated into prose (5732), they demanded room for the play of genius and inspiration; they insisted that the imagination should not be hindered in its attempts to rise above the world of reason and common sense. Their victory was due, not to the skill with which they presented their arguments, but to the fact that literature itself was in need of greater freedom. It was in fact a triumph, not of personalities or of leaders, but of ideas. The effects of the controversy are to be seen in a group of Leipzig writers of Gottsched's own school, the Bremer Beitrdger as they were called after their literary organ. These men - C. F. Gellert (1715-1769), the author of graceful fables and tales in verse, G. W. Rabener (1714-1771), the mild satirist of Saxon provinciality, the dramatist J. Elias Schlegel (1719-1749), who in more ways than one was Lessing's forerunner, and a number of minor writers - did not set themselves up in active opposition to their master, but they tacitly adopted many of the principles which the Swiss had advocated. And in the Bremer Beitrage there appeared in 5 748 the first instalment of an epic by F. G. Klopstock (5724-5803), Der Messias, which was the best illustration of that lawlessness against which Gottsched had protested. More effectively than Bodmer's dry and uninspired theorizing, Klopstock's Messias, and in a still higher degree, his Odes, laid the foundations of modern German literature in the 18th century.

CLASSICAL PERIOD]

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His immediate followers, it is true, did not help to advance matters; Bodmer and J. K. Lavater (1741-1801), whose " physiognomic " investigations interested Goethe at a later date, wrote dreary and now long forgotten epics on religious themes. Klopstock's rhapsodic dramas, together with Macpherson's Ossian, which in the 'sixties awakened a widespread enthusiasm throughout Germany, were responsible for the so-called " bardic " movement; but the noisy rhapsodies of the leaders of this movement, the " bards " H. W. von Gerstenberg (1737-1823), K. F. Kretschmann (1738-1809) and Michael Denis (1729-1800), had little of the poetic inspiration of Klopstock's Odes. The indirect influence of Klopstock as the first inspired poet of modern Germany and as the realization of Bodmer's theories can, however, hardly be over-estimated. Under Frederick the Great, who, as the docile pupil of French culture, had little sympathy for unregulated displays of feeling, neither Klopstock nor his imitators were in favour in Berlin, but at the university of Halle considerable interest was taken in the movement inaugurated by Bodmer. Here, before Klopstock's name was known at all, two young poets, J. I. Pyra (1715-1744) and S. G. Lange (1711-1781), wrote Freundschaftliche Lied& (1737), which were direct forerunners of Klopstock's rhymeless lyric poetry; and although the later Prussian poets, J. W. L. Gleim (1719-1803), J. P. Uz (1720-1796) and J. N. Gotz (1721-1781), who were associated with Halle, and K. W. Ramler (1725-1798) in Berlin, cultivated mainly the Anacreontic and the Horatian ode - artificial forms, which kept strictly within the classic canon - yet Friedrich von Hagedorn (1708-1754) in Hamburg showed to what perfection even the Anacreontic and the lighter a vers de societe could be brought. The Swiss physiologist Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) was the first German poet to give expression to the beauty and sublimity of Alpine scenery (Die Alden, 1 734), and a Prussian officer, Ewald Christian von Kleist (17 15-1759), author of Der Friihling (1749), wrote the most inspired nature-poetry of this period. Klopstock's supreme importance lay, however, in the fact that he was a forerunner of the movement of Sturm and Drang. But before turning to that movement we must consider two writers who, strictly speaking, also belong to the age under consideration - Lessing and Wieland.

As Klopstock had been the first of modern Germany's inspired poets, so Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was the first critic who brought credit to the German name throughout Europe. He was the most liberal-minded exponent of 18thcentury rationalism. Like his predecessor Gottsched, whom he vanquished more effectually than Bodmer had done, he had unwavering faith in the classic canon, but " classic " meant for him, as for his contemporary, J. J. Winckelmann (1717-1768), Greek art and literature, and not the products of French pseudoclassicism, which it had been Gottsched's object to foist on Germany. He went, indeed, still further, and asserted that Shakespeare, with all his irregularities, was a more faithful observer of the spirit of Aristotle's laws, and consequently a greater poet, than were the French classic writers. He looked to England and not to France for the regeneration of the German theatre, and his own dramas were pioneer-work in this direction. Miss Sara Sampson (r 755) is a biirgerliche Tragodie on the lines of Lillo's Merchant of London, Minna von Barnhelm (1767), a comedy in the spirit of Farquhar; in Emilia Galotti (1772), again with English models in view, he remoulded the "tragedy of common life " in a form acceptable to the Sturm and Drang; and finally in Nathan der Weise (1779) he won acceptance for iambic blank verse as the medium of the higher drama. His two most promising disciples - J. F. von Cronegk (1731-1758) and J. W. von Brawe (1738-1758) - unfortunately died young, and C. F. Weisse (1726-1804) was not gifted enough to advance the drama in its literary aspects. Lessing's name is associated with Winckelmann's in Laokoon (1766), a treatise in which he set about defining the boundaries between painting, sculpture and poetry, and with those of the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) and the Berlin bookseller C. F. Nicolai (1733-1811) in the famous Literaturbriefe. Here Lessing identified himself with the best critical principles of the rationalistic movement - principles which, in the later years of his life, he employed in a fierce onslaught on Lutheran orthodoxy and intolerance.

To the widening and deepening of the German imagination C. M. Wieland (1733-1813) also contributed, but in a different way. Although no enemy of pseudo-classicism, he broke with the stiff dogmatism of Gottsched and his friends, and tempered the pietism of Klopstock by introducing the Germans to the lighter poetry of the south of Europe. With the exception of his fairy epic Oberon (1780), Wieland's work has fallen into neglect; he did, however, excellent service to the development of German prose fiction with his psychological novel, Agathon (1766-1767), which may be regarded as a forerunner of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and with his humorous satire Die Abderiten (1774). Wieland had a considerable following, both among poets and prose writers; he was particularly looked up to in Austria, towards the end of the 18th century, where the literary movement advanced more slowly than in the north. Here Aloys Blumauer (1755-1789) and J. B. von Alxinger (1755-1797) wrote their travesties and epics under his influence. In Saxony, M. A. von Thiimmel (1738-1817) showed his adherence to Wieland's school in his comic epic in prose, Wilhelmine (1764), and in the general tone of his prose writings; on the other hand, K. A. Kortum (1745-1824), author of the most popular comic epic of the time, Die Jobsiade (1784), was but little influenced by Wieland. The German novel owed much to the example of Agathon, but the groundwork and form were borrowed from English models; Gellert had begun by imitating Richardson in his Schwedische Grafin (1747-1748), and he was followed by J. T. Hermes (1738-1821), by Wieland's friend Sophie von Laroche (1730-1807), by A. von Knigge (1752-1796) and J. K. A. Musaus (1735-1787), the last mentioned being, however, best known as the author of a collection of Volksmdrchen (1782-1786). Meanwhile a rationalism, less materialistic and strict than that of Wolff, was spreading rapidly through educated middle-class society in Germany. Men like Knigge, Moses Mendelssohn, J. G. Zimmermann (1728-1795), T. G. von Hippel (1741-1796), Christian Garve (1742-1798), J. J. Engel (1741-1802), as well as the educational theorists J. B. Basedow (1723-1790) and J. H. Pestalozzi (1746-1827), wrote books and essays on "popular philosophy " which were as eagerly read as the moralische Wochenschriften of the preceding epoch; and with this group of writers must also be associated the most brilliant of German 18th-century satirists, G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799).

Such was the milieu from which sprang the most advanced pioneer of the classical epoch of modern German literature, J. G. Herder (1744-1803). The transition from the popular philosophers of the Aufklarung to Herder was due in the first instance to the influence of Rousseau; and in Germany itself that transition is represented by men like Thomas Abbt (1738-1766) and J. G. Hamann (1730-1788). The revolutionary nature of Herder's thought lay in that writer's antipathy to hard and fast systems, to laws imposed upon genius; he grasped, as no thinker before him, the idea of historical evolution. By regarding the human race as the product of a slow evolution from primitive conditions, he revolutionized the methods and standpoint of historical science and awakened an interest - for which, of course, Rousseau had prepared the way - in the early history of mankind. He himself collected and published the Volkslieder of all nations (1778-1779), and drew attention to those elements in German life and art which were, in the best and most precious sense, national - elements which his predecessors had despised as inconsistent with classic formulae and systems. Herder is thus not merely the forerunner, but the actual founder of the literary movement known as Sturm and Drang. New ground was broken in a similar way by a group of poets, who show the results of Klopstock's influence on the new literary movement: the Göttingen " Bund " or " Hain," a number of young students who met together in 1772, and for several years published their poetry in the Gottinger Musenalmanach. With the exception of the two brothers, Ch. zu Stolberg (1748-1821) and F. L. zu Stolberg (1750-1819), who occupied a somewhat peculiar position in the " Bund," the members of this coterie were drawn from the peasant class of the lower bourgeoisie; J. H. Voss (1751-1826), the leader of the " Bund," was a typical North German peasant, and his idyll, Luise (1784), gives a realistic picture of German provincial life. L. H. C. Holty (1748-1776) and J. M. Miller (1750-1814), again, excelled in simple lyrics in the tone of the Volkslied. Closely associated with the Göttingen group were M. Claudius (1740-1815), the Wandsbecker Bote - as he was called after the journal he edited - an even more unassuming and homely representative of the German peasant in literature than Voss, and G. A. Burger (1748-1794) who contributed to the Gottinger Musenalmanach ballads, such as the famous Lenore (1 774), of the very first rank. These ballads were the best products of the Göttingen school, and, together with Goethe's Strassburg and Frankfort songs, represent the highest point touched by the lyric and ballad poetry of the period.

But the Göttingen " Bund" stood somewhat aside from the main movement of literary development in Germany; it was only a phase of Sturm and Drang, and quieter, less turbulent than that on which Goethe had set the stamp of his personality. Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) had, as a student in Leipzig (1765-1768), written lyrics in the Anacreontic vein and dramas in alexandrines. But in Strassburg, where he went to continue his studies in 1770-1771, he made the personal acquaintance of Herder, who won his interest for the new literary movement. Herder imbued him with his own ideas of the importance of primitive history and Gothic architecture and inspired him with a pride in German nationality; Herder convinced him that there was more genuine poetry in a simple Volkslied than in all the ingenuity of the German imitators of Horace or Anacreon; above all, he awakened his enthusiasm for Shakespeare. The pamphlet Von deutscher Art and Kunst (1773), to which, besides Goethe and Herder, the historian Justus Moser (1720-1794) also contributed, may be regarded as the manifesto of the Sturm and Drang. The effect on Goethe of the new ideas was instantaneous; they seemed at once to set his genius free, and from 1771 to 1775 he was extraordinarily fertile in poetic ideas and creations. His Gotz von Berlichingen ( 1 77 1 - 1 773), the first drama of the Sturm and Drang, was followed within a year by the first novel of the movement, Werthers Leiden (1774); he dashed off Clavigo and Stella in a few weeks in 1774 and 1775, and wrote a large number of Singspiele, dramatic satires and fragments - including Faust in its earliest form (the so-called Urfaust) - not to mention love-songs which at last fulfilled the promise of Klopstock. Goethe's lyrics were no less epoch-making than his first drama and novel, for they put an end to the artificiality which for centuries had fettered German lyric expression. In all forms of literature he set the fashion to his time; the Shakespearian restlessness of Gotz von Berlichingen found enthusiastic imitators in J. M. R. Lenz (17 51-1792), whose Anmerkungeniibers Theater (1774) formulated theoretically the laws, or defiance of laws, of the new drama, in F. M. von Klinger (1752-1831), J. A. Leisewitz (1752-1806), H.L. Wagner (1747-1779) and Friedrich Muller, better known as Maier Muller (1749-1825). The dramatic literature of the Sturm and Drang was its most characteristic product - indeed, the very name of the movement was borrowed from a play by Klinger; it was inspired, as Giitz von Berlichingen had been, by the desire to present upon the stage figures of Shakespearian grandeur impelled and tortured by gigantic passions, all considerations of plot, construction and form being regarded as subordinate to the development of character. The fiction of the Sturm and Drang, again, was in its earlier stages dominated by Werthers Leiden, as may be seen in the novels of F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819) and J. M. Miller, who has been already mentioned. Later, in the hands of J. J. W. Heinse (1749-1803), author of Ardinghello (1787), Klinger, K. Ph. Moritz (1757-1793), whose Anton Reiser (1785) clearly foreshadows Wilhelm Meister, it reflected not merely the sentimentalism, but also the philosophic and artistic ideas of the period.

With the production of Die Rduber (1781) by Johann Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), the drama of the Sturm and Drang entered upon a new development. Although hardly less turbulent in spirit than the work of Klinger and Leisewitz, Schiller's tragedy was more skilfully adapted to the exigencies of the theatre; his succeeding dramas, Fiesco and Kabale and Liebe, were also admirable stage-plays, and in Don Carlos (1787) he abandoned prose for the iambic blank verse which Lessing had made acceptable in Nathan der Weise. The " practical " character of the new drama is also to be seen in the work of Schiller's contemporary, 0. von Gemmingen (1755-1836), the imitator of Diderot, in the excellent domestic dramas of the actors F. L. Schroder (1744-1816) and A. W. Iffland (1759-1814), and even in the popular medieval plays, the so-called Ritterdramen of which Gotz von Berlichingen was the model. Germany owes to the Sturm and Drang her national theatre; permanent theatres were established in these years at Hamburg, Mannheim, Gotha, and even at Vienna, which, as may be seen from the dramas of C. H. von Ayrenhoff (1733-1819), had hardly then advanced beyond Gottsched's ideal of a national literature. The Hofburgtheater of Vienna, the greatest of all the German stages, was virtually founded in 1776.

The Romantic school, whose chief members were the brothers Schlegel, Tieck, Wackenroder and Novalis, was virtually founded in 1798, when the Schlegels began to publish their journal the Athenaeum; but the actual existence of the school was of very short duration. Wackenroder and Novalis died young, and by the year 1804 the other members were widely separated. Two years later, however, another phase of Romanticism became associated with the town of Heidelberg. The leaders of this second or younger Romantic school were K. Brentano (1778-1842), L. A. von Arnim (1781-1831) and J. J. von Gorres (1776-1848), their organ, corresponding to the Athenaeum, was the Zeitung fiir Einsiedler, or Trost-Einsamkeit, and their most characteristic production the collection of Volkslieder, published under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805-1808). Compared with the earlier school the Heidelberg writers were more practical and realistic, more faithful to nature and the commonplace life of everyday. They, too, were interested in the German past and in the middle ages, but they put aside the idealizing glasses of their predecessors and kept to historic truth; they wrote historical novels, not stories of an imaginary medieval world as Novalis had done, and when they collected Volkslieder and Volksbiicher, they refrained from decking out the simple tradition with musical effects, or from heightening the poetic situation by " Romantic irony." Their immediate influence on German intellectual life was consequently greater; they stimulated and deepened the interest of the German people in their own past; and we owe to them the foundations of the study of German philology and medieval literature, both the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm (1785-1863 and 1786-1859) having been in touch with this circle in their early days. Again, the Heidelberg poets strengthened the national and patriotic spirit cf their people; they prepared the way for the rising against Napoleon, which culminated in the year 1813, and produced that outburst of patriotic song, associated with E. M. Arndt (1769-1860), K. Th. Korner (1791-1813) and M. von Schenkendorf (1783-1817).

The subsequent history of Romanticism stands in close relation to the Heidelberg school, and when, about 1809, the latter broke up, and Arnim and Brentano settled in Berlin, the Romantic movement followed two clearly marked lines of development, one north German, the other associated with 'Wurttemberg. The Prussian capital, hotbed of rationalism as it was, had, from the first, been intimately associated with Romanticism; the first school had virtually been founded there, and north Germans, like Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) and Zacharias Werner (1768-1823) had done more for the development of the Romantic drama than had the members of either Romantic school. These men, and more especially Kleist, Prussia's greatest dramatic poet, showed how the capricious Romantic ideas could be brought into harmony with the classic tradition established by Schiller, how they could be rendered serviceable to the national theatre. At the same time, Berlin was not a favourable soil for the development of Romantic ideas, and the circle of poets which gathered round Arnim and Brentano there, either themselves demonstrated the decadence of these ideas, or their work contained elements which in subsequent years hastened the downfall of the movement. Friedrich de la Motte Fouque (1777-1843), for instance, shows how easy it was for the medieval tastes of the Romanticists to degenerate into mediocre novels and plays, hardly richer in genuine poetry than were the productions of the later Sturm and Drang; and E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), powerful genius though he was, cultivated with preference in his stories, a morbid supernaturalism, which was only a decadent form of the early Romantic delight in the world of fairies and spirits. The lyric was less sensitive to baleful influences, but even here the north German Romantic circle could only point to one lyric poet of the first rank, J. von Eichendorff (1788-1857); while in the poetry of A. von Chamisso (1781-1838) the volatile Romantic spirituality is too often wanting. Others again, like Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866), sought the inspiration which Romanticism was no longer able to give, in the East; still another group, of which Wilh@lm Muller (1794-1827) is the chief representative, followed Byron's example and awakened German sympathy for the oppressed Greeks and Poles.

Apart from Eichendorff, the vital lyric poetry of the third and last phase of Romanticism must be looked for in the Swabian school, which gathered round Uhland. Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862) was himself a disciple of the Heidelberg poets, and, in his lyrics and especially in his ballads, he succeeded in grafting the lyricism of the Romantic school on to the traditions of German ballad poetry which had been handed down from Burger, Schiller and Goethe. But, as was the case with so many other disciples of the Heidelberg Romanticists, Uhland's interest in the German past was the serious interest of the scholar rather than the purely poetic interest of the earlier Romantic poets. The merit of the Swabian circle, the chief members of which were J. Kerner (1786-1862), G. Schwab (1792-1850), W. Waiblinger (1804-1830), W. Hauff (1802-1827) and, most gifted of all, E. Morike (1804-1875) was that these writers preserved the Romantic traditions from the disintegrating influences to which their north German contemporaries were exposed. They introduced few new notes into lyric poetry, but they maintained the best traditions intact, and when, a generation later, the anti-Romantic movement of " Young Germany " had run its course, it was to Wurttemberg Germany looked for a revival of the old Romantic ideas.

Meanwhile, in the background of all these phases of Romantic evolution, through which Germany passed between 1798 and 1832, stands the majestic and imposing figure of Goethe. Personally he had in the early stages of the movement been opposed to that reversion to subjectivity and lawlessness which the first Romantic school seemed to him to represent; to the end of his life he regarded himself as a " classic," not a " romantic " poet. But, on the other hand, he was too liberal-minded a thinker and critic to be oblivious to the fruitful influence of the new movement. Almost without exception he judged the young poets of the new century fairly, and treated them sympathetically and kindly; he was keenly alive to the new - and for the most part " unclassical " - development of literature in England,. France and Italy; and his own published work, above all, the first part of Faust (1808), Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809), Dichtung and Wahrheit (1811-1814, a final volume in 1833), Westostlicher Divan (1819), Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821-1829) and the second part of Faust (published in 1832 after the poet's death), stood in no antagonism to the Romantic ideas of their time. One might rather say that Goethe was the bond between the two fundamental literary movements of the German classical age; that his work achieved that reconciliation of " classic " and " romantic " which, rightly regarded, was the supreme aim of the Romantic school itself.

VI. German Literature Since Goethe (1832-1906) (a) Young Germany. - With Goethe's death a great age in German poetry came to a close. Long before 1832 Romanticism had, as we have seen, begun to lose ground, and the July revolution of 1830, the effects of which were almost as keenly felt in Germany as in France, gave the movement its death-blow.. Meanwhile the march of ideas in Germany itself had not been favourable to Romanticism. Schelling had given place to G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), now the dominant force in German philosophy, and the Hegelian metaphysics proved as unfruitful an influence on literature as that of Fichte and Schelling had been fruitful. The transference of Romantic ideas to the domain of practical religion and politics had proved reactionary in its. effects; Romanticism became the cloak for a kind of Neocatholicism, and Romantic politics, as enunciated by men like F. von Gentz (1764-1832) and Adam Muller (1779-1829), served as an apology for the Metternich regime in Austria. Only at the universities - in Göttingen, Heidelberg and Berlin - did the movement continue, in the best sense, to be productive;. German philology, German historical science and German jurisprudence benefited by Romantic ideas, long after Romantic poetry had fallen into decay. The day of Romanticism was. clearly over; but a return to the classic and humanitarian spirit of the 18th century was impossible. The social condition of Europe had been profoundly altered by the French Revolution;. the rise of industrialism had created new economic problems, the march of science had overturned old prejudices. And in a still higher degree were the ideas which lay behind the social upheaval of the July revolution incompatible with a reversion in Germany to the conditions of Weimar classicism. There was, moreover, no disguising the fact that Goethe himself did not stand high with the younger generation of German writers who came into power after his death.

" Young Germany " did not form a school in the sense in which the word was used by the early Romanticists; the bond of union was rather the consequence of political persecution. In December 1835 the German " Bund " issued a decree suppressing the writings of the " literary school " known as " Young Germany," and mentioned by name Heinrich Heine, Karl Gutzkow, Ludolf Wienbarg, Theodor Mundt and Heinrich Laube. Of these men, Heine (1797-1856) was by far the most famous. He had made his reputation in 1826 and 1827 with Die Harzreise and Das Buck der Lieder, both of which books show how deeply he was immersed in the Romantic traditions. But Heine felt perhaps more acutely than any other man of his time how the ground was slipping away from beneath his feet; he repudiated the Romantic movement and hailed the July revolution as the first stage in the " liberation of humanity "; while ultimately he sought in France the freedom and intellectual stimulus which Germany withheld from him. Heine suffered from having been born in an age of transition; he was unable to realize in a wholehearted way all that was good in the new movement, which he had embraced so warmly; his optimism was counteracted by doubts as to whether, after all, life had not been better in that old Romantic Germany of his childhood for which, to the last, he retained so warm an affection. Personal disappointments and unhappiness added to the bitterness of Heine's nature, and the supremely gifted lyric poet and the hardly less gifted satirist were overshadowed by the cynic from whose biting wit nothing was safe.

Heine's contemporary and - although he was not mentioned in the decree against the school - fellow-fighter, Ludwig Borne (1786-1837), was a more characteristic representative of the " Young German " point of view; for he was free from Romantic prejudices. Borne gave vent to his enthusiasm for France in eloquent Briefe aus Paris (1830-1833), which form a landmark of importance in the development of German prose style. With Karl Gutzkow (1811-1878), who was considerably younger than either Heine or Borne, the more positive aspects of the " Young German " movement begin to be apparent. He, too, had become a man of letters under the influence of the July revolution, and with an early novel, Wally, die Zweiflerin (1835), which was then regarded as atheistic and immoral, he fought in the battle for the new ideas. His best literary work, however, was the comedies with which he enriched the German stage of the 'forties, and novels like Die Ritter vom Geiste (1850-1851), and Der Zauberer von Rom (1858-1861), which have to be considered in connexion with the later development of German fiction. Heinrich Laube (1806-1884), who, as the author of lengthy social novels, and Reisenovellen in the style of Heine's Reisebilder, was one of the leaders of the new movement, is now only remembered as Germany's greatest theatre-director. Laube's connexion (1850-1867) with the Burgtheater of Vienna forms one of the most brilliant periods in the history of the modern stage. Heine and Borne, Gutzkow and Laube - these were the leading spirits of " Young Germany "; in their train followed a host of lesser men, who to the present generation are hardly even names. In the domain of scholarship and learning the " Young German " movement was associated with the supremacy of Hegelianism, the leading spirits being D. F. Strauss (1808-1874), author of the Leben Jesu (1835), the historians G. G. Gervinus (1805-1871) and W. Menzel (1798-1873), and the philosopher L. A. Feuerbach (1804-1872), who, although a disciple of Hegel, ultimately helped to destroy the latter's influence.

Outside the immediate circle of "Young Germany," other tentative efforts were made to provide a substitute for the discredited literature of Romanticism. The historical novel, for instance, which Romanticists like Arnim had cultivated, fell at an early date under the influence of Sir Walter Scott; Wilhelm Hauff, Heinrich Zschokke (1771-1848) and K. Spindler (1796-1855) were the most prominent amidst the many imitators of the Scottish novelist. The drama, again, which since Kleist and Werner had been without definite principles, was, partly under Austrian influence, finding its way back to a condition of stability. In Germany proper, the men into whose hands it fell were, on the one hand, undisciplined geniuses such as C. D. Grabbe (1801-1836), or, on the other, poets with too little theatrical blood in their veins like K. L. Immermann (1796-1840), or with too much, like E. von Raupach (1784-1852), K. von Holtei (1798-1880) and Adolf Milliner (1774-1829) - the last named being the chief representative of the so-called Schicksalstragodie. In those years the Germans were more seriously interested in their opera, which, under C. M. Weber, H. A. Marschner, A. Lortzing and O. Nicolai, remained faithful to the Romantic spirit. In Austria, however, the drama followed lines of its own; here, at the very beginning of the century, H. J. von Collin (1771-1811) attempted in Regulus and other works to substitute for the lifeless pseudo-classic tragedy of Ayrenhoff the classic style of Schiller. His attempt is the more interesting, as the long development that had taken place in Germany between Gottsched and Schiller was virtually unrepresented in Austrian literature. M. von Collin (1779-1824), a younger brother of H. J. von Collin, did a similar service for the Romantic drama. Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872), Austria's greatest poet, began in the school of Milliner with a " fate drama," but soon won an independent place for himself; more successfully than any other dramatist of the century, he carried out that task which Kleist had first seriously faced, the reconciliation of the classicism of Goethe and Schiller with the Romantic and modern spirit of the 19th century. It is from this point of view that works like Das goldene Vliess (1820), Konig Ottokars Gluck and Ende (1825), Der Traum, ein Leben (1834) and Des Meeres and der Liebe Wellen (1831) must be regarded. As far as the poetic drama was concerned, Grillparzer stood alone, for E. F. J. von Munch-Bellinghausen (1806-1871), his most promising contemporary, once so popular under the pseudonym of Friedrich Halm, soon fell back into the trivial sentimentality of the later Romanticists. In other forms of dramatic literature Austria could point to many distinguished writers, notably the comedy-writer, E. von Bauernfeld (1802-1890), while a host of playwrights, chief of whom were F. Raimund (r790-1836) and J. Nestroy (1801-1862), cultivated the popular Viennese farce and fairy-play. Thus, in spite of Metternich's censorship of the drama, the Viennese theatre was, in the first half of the 19th century, in closer touch with literature than that of any other German centre.

The transitional character of the age is best illustrated by two eminent writers whom outward circumstances rather than any similarity of character and aim have classed together. These were K. L. Immermann, who has been already mentioned, and A. von Platen-Hallermund (1796-1835). Immermahn's dramas were of little practical value to the theatre, but one at least, Merlin (1832), is a dramatic poem of great beauty. In his novels, however, Die Epigonen (1836) and Munchhausen (1838-1839), Immermann was the spokesman of his time. He looked backwards rather than forwards; he saw himself as the belated follower of a great literary age rather than as the pioneer of a new one. The bankruptcy of Romanticism and the poetically arid era of " Young Germany " left him little confidence in the future. Platen, on the other hand, went his own way; he, too, was the antagonist both of Romanticism and " Young Germany," and with Immermann himself he came into sharp conflict. But in his poetry he showed himself indifferent to the strife of contending literary schools. He began as an imitator of the German oriental poets - the only Romanticists with whom he had any personal sympathy - and with his matchless Sonette aus Venedig (1825) he stands out as a master in the art of versewriting and as the least subjective of all German lyric poets. In the imitation of Romance metres he sought a refuge from the extravagances and excesses of the Romantic decadence.

Meanwhile the political side of the " Young German " movement, which the German Bund aimed at stamping out, gained rapidly in importance under the influence of the unsettled political conditions between the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The early 'forties were in German literature marked by an extraordinary outburst of political poetry, which may be aptly compared with the national and patriotic lyric evoked by the year 1813. The principles which triumphed in France at the revolution of 1848 were, to a great extent, fought out by the German singers of 1841 and 1842. Begun by mediocre talents like N. Becker (1809-1845) and R. E. Prutz (1816-1872), the movement found a vigorous champion in Georg Herwegh (1817-1875), who in his turn succeeded in winning Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810-1876) for the revolutionary cause. Others joined in the cry for freedom - F. Dingelstedt (1814-1881), A. H. Hoffmann von Fallersieben (1798-1874), and a number of Austrians, who had even more reason for rebellion and discontent than the north Germans. But the best Austrian political poetry, the Spaziergtinge eines Wiener Poeten, 1831, by " Anastasius Griin " (Graf A. A. von Auersperg, 1806-1876), belonged to a decade earlier. The political lyric culminated in and ended with the year 1848; the revolutionists of the 'forties were, if not appeased, at least silenced by the revolution which in their eyes had effected so little. If Freiligrath be excepted, the chief lyric poets of this epoch stood aside from the revolutionary movement; even E. Geibel (1815-1884), the representative poet of the succeeding age, was only temporarily interested in the political movement, and his best work is of a purely lyric character. M. von Strachwitz's (1822-1847) promising talent did not flourish in the political atmosphere; Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff (1797-1848), and the Austrian, Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850), both stand far removed from the world of politics; they are imbued with that pessimistic resignation which is, more or less, characteristic of all German literature between 1850 and 1870.

The thinker and poet who most completely embodies the spirit of this period-who dealt the Hegelian metaphysics its deathblow as far as its wider influence was concerned-was Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Nietzsche had begun as a disciple of ,Schopenhauer and a friend of Wagner, and he ultimately became the champion of an individualistic and optimistic philosophy which formed the sharpest possible contrast to mid-century -pessimism. The individual, not the race, the Herrenmensch, not the slave, self-assertion, not self-denying renunciationthese are some of the ideas round which this new optimistic ,ethics turns. Nietzsche looked forward to the human race ,emerging from an effete culture, burdened and clogged by tradition, and re-establishing itself on a basis that is in harmony with man's primitive instincts. Like Schopenhauer before him, Nietzsche was a stylist of the first rank, and his literary masterpiece, Also sprach Zarathustra (1883-1891), is to be regarded as the most important imaginative work of its epoch.

Nietzschean individualism was only one of many factors which contributed to the new literary development. The realistic movement, as it had manifested itself in France under Flaubert, the Goncourts, Zola and Maupassant, in Russia under Dostoievsky and Tolstoi, and in Norway under Ibsen and Bjornson, was, for a time, the dominant force in Germany, and the younger generation of critics hailed it with undisguised satisfaction; most characteristic and significant of all, the centre .of this revival was Berlin, which, since it had become the imperial capital, was rapidly establishing its claim to be also the literary metropolis. It was the best testimony to the vitality of the movement that it rarely descended to slavish imitation of the realistic masterpieces of other literatures; realism in Germany was, in fact, only an episode of the 'eighties, a stimulating influence rather than an accepted principle or dogma. And its suggestive character is to be seen not merely in the writings of the young Stiirmer and Dranger of this time, but also in those of the older generation who, in temperament, were naturally more inclined to the ideals of a past age.

Of the novelists of the latter class, A. Wilbrandt, who has already been mentioned as a dramatist, has shown, since about 1890, a remarkable power of adapting himself, if not to the style and artistic methods of the younger school, at least to the ideas by which it was agitated; F. Spielhagen's attitude towards the realistic movement has been invariably sympathetic, while a still older writer, Theodor Fontane (1819-1898), wrote between 1880 and 1898 a series of works in which the finer elements of French realism were grafted on the German novel. To the older school belong Wilhelm Jensen (b. 1837), and that fine humorist, Wilhelm Raabe (b. 1831), with whom may be associated as other humorists of this period, H Seidel (1842-1906) and W. Busch (1832-1908). Some of the most interesting examples of recent German fiction come, however, from Austria and Switzerland. The two most eminent Austrian authors, Marie von EbnerEschenbach (b. 1830), and Ferdinand von Saar (1833-1906), both excel as writers of Novellen or short stories-the latter especially being an exponent of that pessimism which is Austria's peculiar heritage from the previous generation of her poets. Austrians too, are Peter Rosegger (b. 1843), who has won popularity with his novels of peasant life, K. E. Franzos (1848-1904) and L. von Sacher-Masoch (1835-1895). German prose fiction is, in Switzerland, represented by two writers of the first rank: one of these, Gottfried Keller, has already been mentioned; the other, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-1898), turned to literature or, at least, made his reputation, comparatively late in life. Although, like Keller, a writer of virile, original verse, Meyer is best known as a novelist; he, too, was a master of the short story. His themes are drawn by preference from the epoch ,of the Renaissance, and his method is characterized by an objectivity of standpoint and a purity of style exceptional in German writers.

The realistic novels of the period were written by H. Conradi (1862-1890), Max Kretzer (b. 1854), M. G. Conrad (b. 1846), H. Heiberg (b. 1840), K. Bleibtreu (b. 185 9), K. Alberti (pseudonym for Konrad Sittenfeld, b. 1862) and Hermann Sudermann .(b. 1857). A want of stability was, however, as has been already indicated, characteristic of the realistic movement in Germany; the idealistic trend of the German mind proved itself ill-adapted to the uncompromising realism of the French school, and the German realists, whether in fiction or in drama, ultimately sought to escape from the logical consequences of their theories. Even Sudermann, whose Frau Sorge (1887), Der Katzensteg (1889), and the brilliant, if somewhat sensational romance, Es war (1894), are among the best novels of this period, has never been a consistent realist. It is consequently not surprising to find that, before long, German fiction returned to psychological and emotional problems, to the poetical or symbolical presentation of life, which was more in harmony with the German temperament than was the robuster realism of Flaubert or Zola. This trend is noticeable in the work of Gustav Frenssen (b. 1863), whose novel Jorn Uhl (1901) was extraordinarily popular; it is also to be seen in the studies of child life and educational problems which have proved so attractive to the younger writers of the present day, such as Hermann Hesse (b. 1877), Emil Strauss (b. 1866), Rudolf Huch (b. 1862) and Friedrich Huch (b. 1873). One might say, indeed, that at the beginning of the 10th century the traditional form of German fiction, the Bildungsroman, had come into its ancient rights again. Mention ought also to be made of J. J. David (1859-1907), E. von Keyserling (b. 1858), W. Hegeler (b. 1870), G. von Ompteda (b. 1863), J. Wassermann (b. 1873), Heinrich Mann (b. 1871) and Thomas Mann (b. 1875). Buddenbrooks (1902) by the last mentioned is one of the outstanding novels of the period. Some of the best fiction of the most recent period is the work of women, the most distinguished being Helene BOhlau (b. 1859), Gabriele Reuter (b. 1859), Clara Viebig (C. Cohn-Viebig, b. 1860) and Ricarda Huch (b. 1864). Whether the latest movement in German poetry and fiction, which, under the catchword Heimatkunst, has favoured the province rather than the city, the dialect in preference to the language of the educated classes, will prove a permanent gain, it is still too soon to say, but the movement is at least a protest against the decadent tendencies of naturalism.

At no period of German letters were literature and the theatre in closer touch than at the end of the r9th and the beginning of the 20th centuries; more than at any previous time has the theatre become the arena in which the literary battles of the day are fought out. The general improvement in the artistic, technical and economic conditions of the German stage have already been indicated; but it was not until 1889 that the effects of these improvements became apparent in dramatic literature. Before that date, it is true, Ernst von Wildenbruch (1845-1909) had attempted to revive the historical tragedy, but the purely literary qualities of his work were handicapped by a too effusive patriotism and a Schillerian pathos; nor did the talent of Richard Voss (b. 1851) prove strong enough to effect any lasting reform. In October 1889, however, Gerhart Hauptmann's play, Vor Sonnenaufgang, was produced on the then recently founded Freie Biihne in Berlin; and a month later, Die Ehre by Hermann Sudermann met with a more enthusiastic reception in Berlin than had fallen to the lot of any German play for more than a generation.

Hauptmann (b. 1862), the most original of contemporary German writers, stands, more or less, alone. His early plays, the most powerful of which is Die Weber (1892), were written under the influence either of an uncompromising realism, or of that modified form of realism introduced from Scandinavia; but in Hanneles Himmelfahrt (1893) he combined realism with the poetic mysticism of a child's dream, in Florian Geyer (1895) he adapted the methods of realism to an historical subject, and in the year 1896 he, to all appearance, abandoned realism to write an allegorical dramatic poem, Die versunkene Glocke. Hauptmann's subsequent work has oscillated between the extremes marked out by these works-from the frank naturalism of Fuhrmann Henschel (1898) and Rose Berndt (1903), to the fantastic mysticism of Der arme Heinrich (1902) and Und Pippa tanzt! (1906).

The dramatic talent of Hermann Sudermann has developed on more even lines; the success of Die Ehre was due in the first instance to the ability which Sudermann had shown in adapting the ideas of his time and the new methods of dramatic presentation to the traditional German biirgerliches Drama. This is the characteristic of the majority of the many plays which followed of which Heimat (1893), Das Gliick im Winkel (1896) and Es lebe das Lebenl (1902) may be mentioned as typical. With less success Sudermann attempted in Johannes (1898) a tragedy on lines suggested by Hebbel. A keen observer, a writer of brilliant and suggestive ideas, Sudermann is, above all, the practical playwright; but it is unfortunate that the theatrical element in his work too often overshadows its literary qualities.

Since 1889, the drama has occupied the foreground of interest in Germany. The permanent repertory of the German theatre has not, it is true, been much enriched, but it is at least to the credit of contemporary German playwrights that they are unwilling to rest content with their successes and are constantly experimenting with new forms. Besides Hauptmann and Sudermann, the most talented dramatists of the day are Max Halbe (b. 1865), O. E. Hartleben (1864-1905), G. Hirschfeld (b. 1873), E. Rosmer (pseudonym for Elsa Bernstein, b. 1866), Ludwig Fulda (b. 1862), Max Dreyer (b. 1862), Otto Ernst (pseudonym for O. E. Schmidt, b. 1862) and Frank Wedekind (b. 1864). In Austria, notwithstanding the preponderant influence of Berlin, the drama has retained its national characteristics, and writers like Arthur Schnitzler (b. 1862), Hermann Bahr (b. 1863), Hugo von Hofmannsthal (b. 1874) and R. Beer-Hofmann (b. 1866) have introduced symbolistic elements and peculiarly Austrian problems, which are foreign to the theatre of north Germany.

The German lyric of recent years shows a remarkable variety of new tones and pregnant poetic ideas; it has, as is natural, been more influenced by the optimism of Nietzsche - himself a lyric poet of considerable gifts - than has either novel or drama. Detlev von Liliencron (1844-1909) was one of the first to break with the traditions of the lyric as handed down from the Romantic epoch and cultivated with such facility by the Munich poets. An anthology of specifically modern lyrics, Moderne Dichtercharaktere (1885) by W. Arent (b. 1864), may be regarded as the manifesto of the movement in lyric poetry corresponding to the period of realism in fiction and the drama. Representative poets of this movement are Richard Dehmel (b. 1863), K. Henckell (b. 1864), J. H. Mackay (b. 1864 at Greenock), G. Falke (b. 1853), F. Avenarius (b. 1856), F. Evers (b. 1871), F. Ddrmann (b. 1870) and K. Busse (b. 1872). A later development of the lyric - a return to mysticism and symbolism - is to be seen in the poetry of Hofmannsthal, already mentioned as a dramatist, and especially in Stefan George (b. 1868). Epic poetry, although little in harmony with the spirit of a realistic age, has not been altogether neglected. Heinrich Hart (1855-1906), one of the leading critics of the most advanced school, is also the author of an ambitious Lied der Menschheit (vols. -3, 1888-1896); more conservative, on the other hand, is Robespierre (1894), an epic in the style of Hamerling by an Austrian, Marie delle Grazie (b. 1864). Attention may also be drawn to the popularity which, for a few years, the so-called Oberbrettl or cabaret enjoyed, a popularity which has left its mark on the latest developments of the lyric. Associated with this movement are O. J. Bierbaum (1865-1910), whose lyrics, collected in Der Irrgarten der Liebe (1901), have been extraordinarily popular, E. von Wolzogen (b. 1855) and the dramatist F. Wedekind, who has been already mentioned.

Whether or not the work that has been produced in such rich measure since the year 1889 - or however much of it - is to be regarded as a permanent addition to the storehouse of German national literature, there can be no question of the serious artistic earnestness of the writers; the conditions for the production of literature in the German empire in the early years of the 10th century were eminently healthy, and herein lies the best promise for the future.

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